MAIM 2013 DEGREE SHOW

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Innovation management as a practice is the orchestration of ignition: the bringing together of disparate elements, thoughtfully and insightfully, to stoke change. Innovation management is the deliberate, informed push forward towards progress, and the skilful negotiation of the shifting, emergent space between inertia and uncontrollability.

With change inevitably comes uncertainty. And innovation, a disruptive form of change, is the embracing, the championing of uncertainty. It is the introduction of the utterly new, something unprecedented, a subversion of the established. And as such, an innovation’s outcomes are often unforeseeable, incalculable. And while innovation need not necessarily be radical, or even perceptibly disruptive, its trajectory roughly mirrors that of an explosion: there is an impetus – the fuse – followed by a blast and a subsequent sizing up of the changed landscape – the result and its aftermath. To innovate is, in essence, to set in motion a chain of events whose outcome changes the landscape itself, and thus shifts all relationships.

But innovation is by no means an unmanageable process. It is for this reason that our focus is upon ignition, the decisive moment – the coming together of spark, accelerant and environmental conditions – which ultimately determines scope and impact.

Innovation management as a practice is the orchestration of ignition: the bringing together of disparate elements, thoughtfully and insightfully, to stoke change. Innovation management is the deliberate, informed push forward towards progress, and the skilful negotiation of the shifting, emergent space between inertia and uncontrollability.

Each of the twenty-one projects presented by the graduating class of 2013 are the result of an ignition. They are thoughtful dissections of opportunities and problems in fields as disparate as architecture, theatre and finance, all united by a common desire for meaningful change.

The projects make up seven clusters (Social Capital, Organisational Culture, Digital, Business Models, Design, New Markets and Luxury) and over the course of the next month we will be sharing with you the many sparks that ignited these projects.